


What I Think You're Asking For

by Siria



Category: Handsome Devil (2016)
Genre: Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24029275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: In which Ned learns how to ask better questions.
Relationships: Conor Masters/Ned Roche
Comments: 20
Kudos: 99





	What I Think You're Asking For

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to trinityofone and sheafrotherdon for audiencing!

It wasn't like winning the Cup changed Wood Hill overnight. Maybe the overall prick quotient declined a little bit, but you could probably chalk that up to half the school diverting the energy they'd normally expend being assholes into regularly getting off on the fact that they'd be able to lord it over everyone from Blackrock and Clongowes for the next year.

(And I'm sort of being metaphorical here, but also not really. The joys of shared bathrooms and thin-walled dorms. It was all either very repressed, homoerotic rugby fantasies or frighteningly detailed dominatrix stuff about Sharon Ní Bheoláin.)

But if people do bad things out of fear, they also continue to do mildly shitty things even when they know better, both because the force of habit is strong and because most people have the memory span of a concussed goldfish.

Put another way: the last part of Fifth Year wasn't as awful as the first part of it had been, and Sixth Year anywhere would probably have been about the same as it was at Wood Hill, because the Leaving Cert is and has always been a certifiable bag of shite. I had Conor's friendship, and varying degrees of truce with a few of the other lads, and that was about it. But that was good enough. When I walked out of the last exam in the Leaving, I didn't immediately strip out of my uniform, stick it in a bin and burn it, so my feelings about Wood Hill had definitely improved over time. I was just never going to dream of the future day when I could drop little Odhrán or Fiachra off at the front door while regaling them with tales of their oul' fella's golden schoolboy triumphs.

So things were better—where better meant "no longer regularly having the seven bells kicked out of me and/or getting suspended"—and I'd realised what an absolute, scuttering gobshite I'd been to Conor and was trying my hardest not to be an absolute, scuttering gobshite to him any more. When you're seventeen, that's a lot.

You just need to get a bit past seventeen to realise that, despite everything you've learned, you still haven't quite figured out how to remove your head from your own arse.

*****

Dublin is one of those cities that's a modern urban sprawl which is home to a sizeable chunk of the entire country's population while also being a weirdly provincial small town where everyone knows everyone else's business and your Auntie Sharon. It can be a bit, what's the word I'm looking for here... suffocating. I'm not saying that's the only reason I was looking at courses in Galway or Scotland or Holland when 90% of Wood Hill Sixth Years were diligently filling out their CAO forms for Arts in UCD or BESS in Trinity, but it was one of them.

As for other reasons... Well, you might have noticed that I'd never actually answered Conor's question. Not when he asked me, not for the rest of our time at Wood Hill. Was I gay? I didn't answer him then because the question pissed me off, but it took me a few more years to realise that the real reason it pissed me off was because I didn't have a fucking notion if I was or not, and a few more years again to realise that the question was the wrong one.

Am I embarrassed that it took me so long to realise that bisexual was an option? Maybe. But I'd just like you to remember that at Wood Hill, CSPE was taught by a priest who legitimately thought that masturbation could make you go blind and that women's wombs could wander untethered through their bodies like weird little flesh balloons. We weren't exactly being encouraged to go hang out at the George on the weekends and explore the wild and wonderful spectrum of human sexuality.

The only thing I did sort of hazily but firmly grasp was that I needed a bit of distance, so I did what generations of Irish people before me had done. I got on a boat to England.

*****

I'm worried that makes it sound like I'm implying I spent my three years at Durham cartwheeling naked through some glitter-strewn, priapic orgy of sexual self-discovery.

Jesus.

I mean, I wasn't a monk or anything, but I don't think I ever made it into the full-on debauched category. I learned how to put on eyeliner with a wobbly hand and how to give decent head to people with a variety of genital configurations and all, but from what I've heard that wouldn't even make it into the debauched category in the Vatican.

My conclusion was basically: "gay" doesn't fit me right, I think "queer" works better, but I don't want to be up myself about it, you know?

I'm still Irish. Our primary identification is always going to be "allergic to notions".

*****

Now, looking back, what I'm actually embarrassed about isn't that I was a bit slow on the old sexual uptake. It's that I never answered _Conor_. He was always braver than the rest of us put together, and he hardly ever asked for anything, and one of the few times he'd asked me to be honest with him, I'd completely fucking bottled it.

Look, it's tough to keep a friendship going when you leave school, even with the best of intentions. Conor really was the best friend I'd ever had, but when you were both busy with uni in two entirely different countries, it was impossible for things to stay the same as they had when you'd been able to stay awake late into the night, laughing and whispering to one another in the darkness of your shared bedroom.

Honestly, I thought about telling him a few times, when I'd figured it all out. Even started to type out a message to him once or twice, but it always felt weird and stilted.

_Dear Conor, I hope this finds you well. Pursuant to your question of four years ago, please be advised that I'm not a heterosexual. Is mise le meas, etc._

I deleted them all unsent, because for feck's sake. And also because, with the benefit of hindsight, it was becoming glaringly obvious to me that I'd spent years alternately repressing and nursing a definite thing for Conor, and if I told him I was queer then I'd sort of have to confess to that as well, and if I did that it'd be for the kind of selfish reasons that...

Well, like I said, I was trying my best not to be an absolute, scuttering gobshite to him any more.

*****

Which brings us to here and now. I was standing in Heuston Station, feeling grubby and jet-lagged and wondering if I had enough time to grab something to eat before my platform was announced. In an ideal world, my dad would have picked me up from the airport, given how the prodigal son had just returned from Oz after two years away, but Natalie was due to pop at any moment and the adult offspring was further down the priority list than the soon-to-be newborns, it seemed.

(Yeah, plural. Twins. _And_ it meant Natalie had to give up the fags, so honestly I wasn't put out by the prospect of being a big brother or anything, I just thought it was hilarious. You're 53, Dad, best of luck.)

"Ned?"

I turned and Conor was standing right behind me. I'd been aware, from the intermittent pictures he posted on Instagram whenever he remembered that the app existed, that he'd changed since we left Wood Hill. His hair was closer cropped, he'd grown another inch or two, and he'd filled out a little more in the shoulders. (Rugby does have its benefits, I suppose). But it was one thing to know that from pictures, and another thing to have him right there in front of me, three-dimensional and smiling like he was happy to see me.

Blame it on the jet lag brain, but I still hadn't managed to do anything more than gape at him before he wrapped me up in a big hug. I was dimly aware that I should protest, because twenty-one hours before I'd been boarding my connecting flight in Tokyo and I was aware that there were many times in my life when I'd been more fragrant. But honest to Jesus all I could do is bask in how good that hug felt. We weren't huggers, Conor and myself, back in the day, but maybe if we had been I would have come to certain realisations about myself that much sooner.

Conor just smelled really nice, okay? And he was warm. Fuck off.

When Conor finally pulled back, he was still smiling and I was feeling a little bit dazed and also dimly aware that the tinny computerised voice over the tannoy was jerkily announcing that the train now standing at—Platform—3—will call at—Thurles, Limerick Junction, Charleville, Mallow—and—Cork, but I couldn't really find it in myself to give a flying fuck.

"I thought you were going to be backpacking for another few months yet?" Conor said softly. Had his mouth always had that curve to it? Sweet Jesus. "Welcome home."

"I'm bisexual," I heard myself blurt out, and then I inwardly began a novena to be granted the miraculous double-jointed ability to kick myself up the arse.

*****

Conor Masters has the patience of I don't know what, because he didn't run screaming at that. Instead, once he'd gently verified that we were both taking the three o'clock train to Cork, he volunteered to go get tea and sandwiches while sending me on ahead to bag us some seats and a spot to stash our respective bags.

Luckily, the train wasn't exactly full—it was midweek and the commuters wouldn't start showing up for another couple of hours yet—so I managed to get us a table with four seats to ourselves and then slumped gently in the corner while hoping for the sweet embrace of death before Conor showed up.

No such luck.

Conor slid in opposite me right as the doors closed. He deposited two teas and what looked like half of the M&S chiller cabinet on the table as the train jerked to life and started to pull out of the station.

"Hungry, yeah?" I said, trying to sit a little more upright and tugging my hoodie sort of straight. I reached for the nearest tea and downed a healthy swallow. It was still far too hot for me to do that comfortably but feck it, I needed the caffeine.

It was fascinating to see that Conor hadn't grown any better at hiding a blush. "Well, I didn't know what you'd like, so. Options."

"Right," I said. I knew that he didn't mean it like that—sarcasm or double entendres have never been Conor's stock-in-trade—but now I was left staring down at a BLT and a chicken-and-stuffing and wondering if they were symbolic of my own too-slow realisation that sexually speaking, I was far more inclined towards _options_ than not.

By the time the train was rolling through Kildare, the conversation had shifted from stilted to something close to how regular people carry on. It wasn't as if Conor'd turned into a chatterbox over the last five years. But he seemed like, well, like what my cousin Marian would call _centred. In tune with his inner self._

Of course, Marian runs a "reiki and wellness centre" in Sydney and spends half of her time baked out of her tree, so she would, wouldn't she?

I told him some stories about India and Vietnam and Australia, but mostly I just sat there and listened to Conor tell me about himself: about his job and the Rugby Sevens team he played on at weekends and his cousin's disaster of a wedding last summer. I mean, I knew the basics. It's not like we'd stopped talking to one another the moment we walked out of Wood Hill for the last time, I'm not that melodramatic. But there was a difference between the little slivers of him I got online or through the occasional FaceTime call and this.

There was a gap between knowing that neither of us were the scared, stupid kids we'd been and sitting listening to him mention how his company was sending him to Cork for a three-day data analytics training seminar or some shit because that's who he was now: an adult with responsibilities. A real, whole person. Someone who was happy.

That was nice, actually. That made me happy, too.

*****

Somewhere after Thurles the jet lag and the carbs from two and a half sandwiches won their battle with the caffeine and I fell asleep. Just before we arrived into Mallow, the tea trolley came through the carriage and bashed into our table. I woke with a start to realise two things. One, that I'd drooled ostentatiously all over my hoodie, and two, that Conor was staring at me with a look on his face that...

Look, National Essay Finalist or not, I'm not sure I'm able to put that look into words. It was soft and, and _fond_ , but there was also an edge of hunger to it and just seeing it made my mouth go dry and the tips of my ears feel hot. Fucking mortifying, is what it was, even though—especially because?—I was pretty sure the look on my own face in response wasn't that much different.

I slugged the last of my tea. It was stone cold by now, but it gave me something to do with my hands and stopped me from blurting out anything that'd make me look an even bigger eejit.

"You staying with your folks?" Conor said after a moment.

"Yeah," I said, scrubbing my hand through my hair. "Just, you know, until I figure out what I want to do next. They built a place just outside Carrigaline when they moved back here."

"Right," Conor said. "Right." He looked like he was about to say something else, but people were starting to stand, stretching and getting their luggage down from the overhead racks and he clearly thought the better of it.

*****

The platform at Kent Station was the usual bustle of people wrangling rolling suitcases and buggies that didn't want to unfold and kids who'd fallen asleep on the train and were now cranky and fussing at being woken up. I tried to give an empathetic look to one long-suffering toddler whose mam was wrangling her into a puffy coat that looked like someone had dyed the Michelin Man pink and then skinned him, but that just made the kid burst into loud, heartbroken sobs.

"Jesus," I said, startled.

"So, ah, you still have my number, right?" Conor didn't look any the worse for having spent two and a half hours on a train—even his shirt was still crisp—but his hand was clenching and unclenching around the handle of his suitcase.

"Yeah," I nodded. "So if you want to meet up some evening for, for a pint or something or—"

"Yeah, that's—"

"I mean, I know you'll be busy with the course and that—"

"But I'll—"

"Yeah."

"So."

"Right. Sound." _Five years_ , I told myself, _and you're still pure and utter shite at this_. In my hand, my phone buzzed: Dad, saying he was waiting outside in the car park. "I should head, but maybe tomorrow night we can catch up properly, or maybe Friday if that's better for you..."

Conor nodded at me, and there was a look on his face that I thought I could describe this time because I'd seen him wear it before. A kind of muffled resignation. Well, no, let's not beat around the bush here. Resignation to the fact that I'd disappointed him yet again. Because I knew what he expected from me—what he had every reason to expect. He thought that moment on the train had spooked me, and that I was giving him the standard response you gave to any Facebook acquaintance you bumped into in the bread aisle in Dunne's.

 _God, isn't it mad we haven't seen one another since we were out Stephen's Night? Sure we'll have to catch up at some point, absolutely, meet up for lunch or something_ , you'd say, before both of you continued on in the serene knowledge that you never, ever would.

There was nothing to keep us in contact any more, no need for either of us to do anything other than let a childhood friendship fade into a kind of bittersweet, half-remembered nostalgia.

But even after five years, Conor Masters was still one of the bravest and kindest people I'd ever met and—let's be honest here, I'm no saint—he'd grown up to be an absolute ride. _Fuck it_ , I told myself, and took a step closer to press a kiss to his cheek. I could feel his stubble against my lips, and the way his breath hitched at my touch, and I pulled back just enough to say, "Tomorrow night, yeah? I'll give you a ring."

My heart was hammering in my chest, because that was a _gesture_ , right? That was pure putting yourself out there, admitting that you'd been an oblivious thick back in the day but that you were hoping for a second chance.

But of course Conor was Conor and there was nothing I was capable of in terms of courage that he couldn't surpass. He turned his head just enough, and he kissed me. We kissed. It was a small, chaste thing: lips pressed against lips, soft and gentle, nothing that was going to get us kicked out of the station or have ould wans calling into _Liveline_ or anything like that. It still had me feeling pretty wobbly in the knee department, but even that sensation had nothing on how I felt when the kiss finally ended and I could see the look of flushed happiness on Conor's face.

"Thanks," he said softly.

"Oh," I said, feeling sort of shyly smug. It wasn't that I got a lot of complaints in the kissing department or anything, but outright expressions of gratitude were still fairly rare. "For the—for the kiss?"

"For deciding to come out to me in the middle of Heuston Station," Conor said.

"Oh."

"You were pretty loud, you know. Very emphatic." Now when the almighty fuck had Conor learned how to be a tease?

"Just for that," I said, trying my best to sound irritated, "you're buying the first round tomorrow." It turned out it was hard to sound irritated when you were smiling as hard as I was.

"Okay," Conor said. He was smiling, too.

And look, I'm not taking back anything I said before, about how people do bad things out of fear, or how concussed-goldfish force of habit keeps a lot of us trudging through the same old round of low-grade bullshit. But sometimes two people can choose to do something different, something better. And sometimes even an eejit—and to be utterly clear, I'm talking about me here—can be brave enough to just get over himself, and kiss the lad he fancies, and isn't that all anyone can ask for?

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to set the movie's action during their Fifth Year, but that's very arbitrary. _Lord of the Flies_ is a Junior Cert book, but Conor's playing in the Senior Cup and they're clearly not in TY. Neither the timeline nor the geography of the movie make that much sense, so let's just roll with it.


End file.
